I’ll Show You Bravery

Glowing with the joy of being where she belongs, Virginia sails Overproof towards New Caledonia. Credit: Virginia Iliff

This feature article originally appeared in AFLOAT Magazine and forms part of our latest edition of boating features from Sailor Woman Jill Knight exploring life onboard and the joy of ocean passage-making.

When I was at Chagos in the Indian Ocean on Cooee, there was an Australian boat that stood out from the more traditional vessels of that year’s cruising fleet. She was the Adams 13, Overproof. The Gulf War was on, so most of the fleet later congregated in South Africa before venturing into the Atlantic. Against the trend, Overproof took off on the Roaring Forties, heading east towards Ceduna in South Australia. Years passed before I encountered Overproof again. This was at Great Keppel Island and her new owner had just sailed her over the Top End en route to Sydney. That is when I met Virginia Iliff, perhaps the most remarkable sailor I’ve had the delight and privilege to know.

Starting and stopping early

Virginia has been sailing since about five years of age. Relatives at Church Point had a couple of rowboats, one of which had a mast and halyard. As a little kid, she would row upwind then fly a bedsheet from the mast to return home. Her father was a keen harbour sailor and encouraged his daughter’s endeavours under sail. At about 16 she joined the Seaforth Moth Sailing Club and became a competitive racer. At 19, Virginia was a fit, healthy, happy young woman in her first important relationship and thinking about a career on the water. Then tragedy struck. She began having bouts of double vision, then difficulty with swallowing and breathing. In an incredible stroke of luck, a GP friend invited her for an appointment; in spite of the condition’s rarity, he immediately diagnosed myasthenia gravis. This is a chronic autoimmune disease causing severe weakness in voluntary muscles such as those needed for mobility, swallowing and breathing. It is incurable. Quite quickly, Virginia’s days on the water came to an end. This was the 1960s and treatments were drastic, with side effects at times worse than the disease. The main drug was injected for a period, gradually paralysing the muscles before a period of remission. Virginia’s throat was opened for a tracheotomy tube so that a respirator could be attached to keep her breathing, sometimes for months at a time. A tube into her stomach bypassed her swallowing muscles and kept her nourished. She used a wheelchair when mobility was otherwise impossible and was 30 before a new treatment sent myasthenia gravis into remission. This allowed her to live something approaching normal life.

Never giving up

None of this, awful though it was, killed this young woman’s spirit. In the early days after diagnosis she set up a massage business that went well for a time. Later, during a temporary remission, she indulged her talent for electronic gadgets and took a job as a private investigator, following suspects and bugging conversations. By the mid-seventies the new treatment was beginning to make a real difference. With the support of the Whitlam government, Virginia was offered rehabilitation training and studied for qualifications in Radio Trades and also in Television Servicing Principles. With the tracheotomy and a feeding tube in her stomach, Virginia could not be on the water but became well enough to be involved in the influential women’s movement in Sydney. She set up a recording studio for women musicians, building the mixing console herself. In one hilarious more recent incident I was at a pub with her and Phil Emmanuel was playing live. The sound really was poor but tolerable. Not for Virginia. She strode over to the console and moved the hapless young operator aside. Suddenly, to the relief of all who had feared an unpleasant scene, Phil got the sound he deserved and everyone, even the young mixer, was grateful. But back to the 70s. Despite still being relatively frail and vulnerable and still with the feeding tube, Virginia continued working with the women’s movement, protesting on that memorable day outside the Darlinghurst jail to support the 78ers arrested in the first Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

Back to sea

By 1980, at 36-years-old, Virginia was doing well but pining for the sea. Not even the tracheotomy – which would drown her of course if she went overboard – could hold her back. She bought Pisces, a Roberts 32, and moved aboard. She found mostly women friends as crew for some pretty constant cruising around Pacific countries, and made many voyages up and down the Australian east coast. At one point she left Pisces and flew to Hawaii and began a year of hitching rides. On five different boats she ventured farther afield than she would have taken the Roberts, then hopped on another boat for the Ambon Race, continuing on the same boat to Bali.

The 50th Sydney–Hobart

In 1992 Virginia was in Sydney when her father, and staunchest supporter, heard on the radio that someone was trying to pull together a crew of disabled sailors to compete in the 50th Sydney-Hobart Race. Virginia must have been the answer to organisers’ prayers. She was the only woman aboard Carpe Diem, a sleek Adams 15, and the crew spent the following year qualifying. Virginia spent the year dreaming of owning such a boat. Qualification for the Hobart race required an offshore voyage to Lord Howe Island and return. In his book, Life Without Limits, skipper David Pescud describes a night of violent weather with 80 knot winds and the bravest act he had ever seen. A running backstay had come away from the mast. As the lightest person on the crew, Virginia volunteered to be winched up the violently flexing spar to reattach the stay. Carpe Diem and crew made history not only by qualifying, but by completing the 1994-5 Sydney Hobart Race. And with an impressive result: they came in 27th out of a fleet of 300 and were given star treatment at Constitution Dock. Virginia recalls television cameras and a little boy in a wheelchair brought by his mother to welcome his heroes. Once back in her element Virginia made up for lost time. She delivered a yacht to Australia from St Martin in the Caribbean and spent time as a Watchleader on South Passage. She gathered a slew of sailing-related qualifications: Coxswains; MasterV; Yachtmaster Offshore (Sail), endorsed as AYF Offshore Instructor. She was where she belonged and thriving.

And still afloat

Virginia sold Pisces in 1998 and bought Overproof. Her own Adams at last. With backpackers picked up as crew at various points, Virginia sailed from Fremantle, over the Top End via Darwin, anchoring at Great Keppel Island on her way to Sydney. Later she revisited the Pacific on Overproof and sailed the Australian east coast many times. It is always wonderful for me to catch up with her, as I have over the last quarter century. She is so knowledgeable, and sharing the usual boat talk of anchors and heat exchangers with another woman is more fun for me, somehow, than with the more usual groups of men. I recall once at a barbecue at Lawrie’s Marina in Mooloolaba someone making a good-natured joke about Virginia and me poring over a faulty gear change mechanism, oblivious to the socialising going on around us. She and I are both octogenarians now and both still afloat. These days myasthenia gravis again shapes her life to a degree, but she walks, enjoys making music and playing with a boat full of electronic gadgets. Above all, Overproof is still home and she is still on the water.

Linda Wayman was editor of Cruising Helmsman and about to attempt the Transfield Trans Tasman race with Kay Cottee when she met Virginia in 1986. And to the next journalist who says to Kay and me, she wrote after that encounter, “aren’t you brave”, I will reply. You want to know what bravery is? I’ll show you bravery.

This feature article originally appeared in AFLOAT Magazine. To explore more stories like this, browse the AFLOAT Magazine archive or view the latest edition of AFLOAT Magazine.